The present invention relates to a method for the separation of pure chlorophyll crystals from photosynthetizing living organisms. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for obtaining pure chlorophyll wherein a combination of two organic solvents is used to precipitate chlorophyll crystals.
A conventional method known hitherto for extracting chlorophyll from photosynthetizing living organisms such as spinach comprises treating spinach with boiling water and then extracting the treated spinach with methyl alcohol and petroleum ether. However, this method fails to obtain chlorophyll in a good yield because the method involves chemical decomposition of chlorophyll during the treatment with boiling water and loss of chlorophyll during the extraction operation. In addition, this method has such a drawback that all operations involved are complicate and troublesome and thus need considerable time and labor. As further drawback of this method, chlorophyll obtained according to this method contains yellow impurities which make difficult the operation in the subsequent chromatographic step.